I go visit my client Evelyn, a woman I've been with now for five or six years. I know what makes her happy and I know what makes her mad. She lives in Section 8 HUD housing in Abington, PA. In fact, I just got an email alert from NAMI asking me to call Sen. Arlen Specter's office to ensure passage of a mental health bill, so I did call his Harrisburg office and left a message with Zach urging the senator to vote for the bill. Specter has a long lingering brain tumor and they want to knight Teddy in England.
I would prefer not to die from a brain tumor. Is there a choice?
So, Evelyn gives me her Cream of Rice cereal, made by Nabisco. It's nutritionally worthless but they add the vitamins and minerals they've removed from the rice. I make it with milk so I get my protein and then I cover it with maple syrup which makes it taste like pudding!
The cereal box says you can use it until 2007, so I'm not surprised at the slightly off-taste. I guess added thiamine and niacin get rancid just like the rest of us.
Pudding is without doubt my favorite category of food.
Return engagement for dinner last night from my son Dan and his future-bride Nicole. As a mother/law, I was thinking what Nicole brings to Dan. Dan is serious, mellow. Nicole is fun-loving, garrulous, interested in just about everything. She gave me a Sun Magazine to read, something Dan would never be interested in. This is so cool when couples bring into the partnership a widening of their arena of interests.
I didn't start dinner until about 6 and was mildly panicky. Both Dan and Nicole are hard workers and I knew they were starving. I got a late start cuz I was at my printer's setting up my Yes I Can booklet about living well with bipolar disorder and depression.
Mark Amos and I had worked together many years on The Compass so it was good to see him again. He is a true master at what he does. I always ask his opinion on things. And also I peek at everything he's working on.
"How did you find these people in Peru?" I asked. It was a solicitation letter from an orphanage.
I carefully selected the color of the cover stock we'll use. Daffodil.
He'll run the presses today. He hasn't called me so I guess everything's in order.
Dinner menu:
Atlantic salmon sauteed on red peppers from Chile and mushrooms from PA
Steamed asparagus (from the 'gus' family as Nicole said)
Tiny baby red bliss taters w/butter
Garden Salad with homemade vinaigrette garlic dressing (thanks Dan for chopping
the garlic into teeny tiny pieces)
Stewart's Root Beer, on sale at The Giant
Mom, asked Dan, dyou have any salt around here?
Sure, Sweetie, I said, getting the big Morton's saltbox out from the cupboard.
One reason I started making my own baby food for my kids is b/c I READ THE GODDAM LABELS! Gerber, in those days, put sugar and salt in babyfood! Yeah, brainwash em when they're young. Kill em in the prime of life from the fruits of your criminal indifference to their safety.
Dan tried unsuccessfully to load the photo of the Board Members on the ND website. So now when you click on it you get this gray patch where the photo should go. I kind of like it. Abstract art.
Lest you think I've given up my morning reading, I set my timer for an hour so I could lie in bed and read. This, of course, was after I'd done an hour's worth of work. A black book with silver lettering caught my eye from my book shelf. It was one of the first books I read about manic depression after my diagnosis.
Back in 1984 when I was diagnosed you couldn't find a thing about the illness. The book Psychiatry: A Personal View was on the remaindered table. Sure enough, there was a fantastic description of the spectacle of mania, so I bought the book, read the good parts, then tucked it away until now - 20 years later. Just goggled the author's name and this is what came up. I was hoping he'd still be alive but alas he died in 2005 of a brain tumor. Milton Miller, MD. No one's ever heard of him. His book is good but not great. He himself was great, not merely good.
So, I'm up in my comfy bed this morning, covered over with three blankets, and Milton is talking about doing therapy with a woman he has just put on lithium. The drug came out in the 1970s. His patient did very well on it and she & her husband wrote a letter to John Cade in Australia, the man who discovered it.
At that point, I put the book down and thought. Hmmm. In the 20 drafts I did of my bipolar brochure, the important part about my writing Paul Janssen was left out!
These mysterious things happen. How did I ever excise that? Truth is, I did write Paul Janssen, founder of Janssen Pharmaceutica, makers of Risperdal, which I took to control my manias. Janssen wrote back quickly - from Belgium - and I treasure the letter. Apparently, tho, not enough to leave it in my booklet.
I do think GREAT PEOPLE will write you back. True, they are very busy, but they appreciate the efforts of their fans. A friend of mine wrote the great Kubler-Ross, who not only wrote her back but invited her to visit!
Speaking of Reaching Out, I told Dan I spoke to a woman at the supermarket and told her about my program on Saturday. I knew she didn't have a mood disorder but I was also fairly sure she knew someone who did. We were standing at the check-out waiting to be served.
Mom, said Dan, you're hyper-social.
Wow! I like that. Hyper-social. See, there's no point in standing in line when there's a friendly-looking person next to you. We got to talking about clementines. I had returned a carton of mine b/c they were TERRIBLE. Peg actually said to me, Yes, there's a lot of talk that the clementines aren't good.
Thank you for validating me, I said, and then launched into my bipolar program on Saturday. You're all invited. Check the website for details.
Time to work on my short story now. I've got the name already. But can't decide if I should make it into a series of letters. I've got the rudiments of a plot but expect it will write itself.
